Thursday, June 3, 2010

Tutoring program receives Sun-Times Literacy Award

Tutoring program receives Sun-Times Literacy Award

Tutoring program receives Sun-Times Literacy Award

Posted: 24 May 2010 08:51 PM PDT

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The Cluster Tutoring Program, based in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago near Oak Park, is the recipient of the 2010 Sun-Times Literacy Award.

John Barron, Sun-Times Media publisher, including Chicago Sun-Times and Pioneer Press newspapers, awarded the $10,000 prize May 13 at First United Church of Oak Park.

Administered by Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth, the award has been presented for the last three years to a tutoring or mentoring program whose primary focus is literacy.

"What we're really exchanging through writing and reading is all the big stuff: information and entertainment and emotion and history and poetry and feelings and knowledge and understanding and truth," Barron said.

Cluster provides free one-on-one tutoring and mentoring to students from Chicago's Austin neighborhood. Tutors are volunteers from Oak Park and other Chicago suburbs who work to improve students' academic performance and to build relationships that overcome the boundaries of age, race and socio-economic background.

Cluster currently serves 90 youth in kindergarten through high school with a total program budget of $70,000.

This award will help Cluster cover expansion costs for its literacy program over the next three years. Specifically, the award money will be used to help Cluster expand and improve three programs -- its structured reading program, its early literacy assessments and its vocabulary development program.

Jordan Burks, a Cluster fifth-grader, accepted the award by sharing how, with the help of one-on-one tutoring, he now reads above grade level.

The Sun-Times Literacy Award is administered by the Lawyers Lend-A-Hand to Youth Program. Lend-A-Hand awarded more than $200,000 in grants this year, providing support to 30 programs serving 8,000 youth across the Chicago area.



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